


Resources

by Bluewolf458



Category: The Sentinel (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-05
Updated: 2019-03-05
Packaged: 2019-11-09 09:04:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17998907
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bluewolf458/pseuds/Bluewolf458
Summary: Stoddard sets a class a challenge





	Resources

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Sentinel Thursday

Resources

by Bluewolf

The group of students standing just inside the door of the university basement looked at their lecturer with puzzled eyes. He grinned. "In this room you have a selection of the resources that were available to early man. You've been studying anthropology for several months; you have - or should have - knowledge that our very-long-ago ancestors didn't have. All right, I admit that I'm cramming hundreds of years of that knowledge into one day. But think! What will you have to do, what will you need, not just to survive, but to survive comfortably?"

Blair Sandburg, at sixteen the youngest of the group by a full two years, frowned slightly as a memory of an early lecture given by Professor Stoddard nudged its way into the forefront of his mind, dragging with it information from some six years previously. He moved towards the scattered, apparently random, selection of rocks and plants that covered much of the floor, aware that the attention of the other students, none of whom had yet moved, was on him, and also aware of a touch of resentment from at least some of them. He suspected that if he had been twenty - or even eighteen, the age of most of them - that resentment would still have been there; it was clear to him that several of the class had believed that anthropology would be an easy option; but many years of wandering with a footloose mother had shown him, pretty well from the time that he could walk, that how other people lived was not necessarily an 'easy' option.

And now he remembered clearly, as he had not when Stoddard gave that general lecture on 'pre-historic' man at the start of the semester; the period involved had merged with all his other childhood memories.

He and Naomi had lived with an Inuit tribe for several months when he was ten, and he had been treated as one of the tribe's children, and taught with them.

Blair looked over the materials Stoddard had provided, knowing that those months were providing him with knowledge that Stoddard's lectures hadn't fully covered, even though Stoddard had done some demonstration. But of course, in this situation Stoddard would be happy if all any of them managed to do was select a stone that could be held in one hand and used as a hammer.

As he looked over everything, the other students slowly moved to join him; but he was the only one to pick up a fairly large piece of flint as well as a nicely hand-sized stone, two pieces of stick - one a fair bit shorter than the other - and some reeds.

He moved to one side, settled down and began to hit the flint hard - but carefully - with the stone. Pieces of flint began to flake off. After he had several flakes he stopped and examined them; chose one, and used it to cut a slit at the thin end of the shorter stick. He slotted the flint into the slit. Then he took the reeds and began to twist them together, making a length of cord. Using that, he bound the top of the stick, fastening the flint in place.

Then he checked the other stick. Yes. As he had thought, it was quite fresh, and when he used another of the flint flakes to cut into it, resin seeped out. He rubbed the resin around the reed cord, knowing that when it hardened, the relatively fragile reed cord would be secure, and he would have a knife.

Finally he sat back, and it was only then that he realized he was being watched, open-mouthed, by the other students... and by Professor Stoddard, who looked surprised but not disbelieving.

Then Stoddard grinned at him. "You've done that before," he said.

Blair's face reddened a little. "I... I spent a few months with an Inuit tribe when I was ten. The tribe's shaman taught things like flint knapping to the children of the tribe, and because I was there... well, I got the lessons too. He didn't want the children to forget the skills the tribe had had before they could get steel knives..."

"Sensible man," Stoddard said.

"Though I'm badly out of practice," Blair went on. "This is the first time I've done anything with the knowledge since I left, so it really isn't very good."

Stoddard asked, "Can you work with bone, too?"

"I know the basics, but Mom and I moved on before we were taught very much, so not really."

He saw approval in Stoddard's eyes. "It takes a wise man to admit that a little knowledge does not automatically provide skill," he said. Then he turned and looked around the class, nodding as he saw the things - mostly hand-sized stones - that most of them had picked up before they realized just what Blair was doing.

"What most of you have chosen is what very early men would have selected when they first started using tools. What Blair did is moving from those very early days and into an era when man began making tools, not just depending on something chance-found that he could use. But you heard what Blair said; he was taught how to do it. When man first started using flint he undoubtedly utilized flakes that had eroded off veins of the stuff, and only later discovered how to knap flint, chert or obsidian, and work it into the best shape for different jobs... and each development came from expanding on what they already knew. And they showed their children what they had learned.

"Blair has actually shown you what I had intended to explain in my next lecture; how technology developed from the basic 'pick up something you can use' to actually working something to make a tool. But it was his good luck that someone taught him."

Blair became aware of nods from most of his fellow students, and realized that most of them were envious rather than resentful. Yes, there was some resentment - but, he suddenly realized, it came from the students who resented anyone who did better in class than they did.

And after Stoddard dismissed the class... several of his fellow students approached Blair, asking if he would give them lessons in knapping flint.

And little did he realize that in a way this was the start of the work he would eventually do as a TA at Rainier.


End file.
